Related papers: Permutations of counters on a table

A representation number is a function which expresses the number of ways an integer can be written as a sum of elements of chosen sets. One of the oldest number-theoretic results on representation numbers is Fermat's theorem which says that…

In combinatorial game theory, the winning player for a position in normal play is analyzed and characterized via algebraic operations. Such analyses define a value for each position, called a game value. A game (ruleset) is called universal…

The study of pinnacle sets has been a recent area of interest in combinatorics. Given a permutation, its pinnacle set is the set of all values larger than the values on either side of it. Largely inspired by conjectures posed by Davis,…

We study so-called invariant games played with a fixed number $d$ of heaps of matches. A game is described by a finite list $\mathcal{M}$ of integer vectors of length $d$ specifying the legal moves. A move consists in changing the current…

We construct a Parrondo's game using discrete time quantum walks. Two lossing games are represented by two different coin operators. By mixing the two coin operators $U_{A}(\alpha_{A},\beta_{A},\gamma_{A})$ and…

In the {\em Musical Chairs} game $MC(n,m)$ a team of $n$ players plays against an adversarial {\em scheduler}. The scheduler wins if the game proceeds indefinitely, while termination after a finite number of rounds is declared a win of the…

Let $m$ be a positive integer and let $\rho(m,n)$ be the proportion of permutations of the symmetric group ${\rm Sym}(n)$ whose order is coprime to $m$. In 2002, Pouyanne proved that $\rho(n,m)n^{1-\frac{\phi(m)}{m}}\sim \kappa_m$ where…

In this paper, we introduce the models of permutations with bias, which are random permutations of a set, biased by some preference values. We present a new parametric test, together with an efficient way to calculate its p-value. The final…

The number of fixed points of a random permutation of 1,2,...,n has a limiting Poisson distribution. We seek a generalization, looking at other actions of the symmetric group. Restricting attention to primitive actions, a complete…

Subtraction games is a class of combinatorial games. It was solved since the Sprague-Grundy Theory was put forward. This paper described a new algorithm for subtraction games. The new algorithm can find win or lost positions in subtraction…

That there exist two losing games that can be combined, either by random mixture or by nonrandom alternation, to form a winning game is known as Parrondo's paradox. We establish a strong law of large numbers and a central limit theorem for…

Consider a situation with $n$ agents or players where some of the players form a coalition with a certain collective objective. Simple games are used to model systems that can decide whether coalitions are successful (winning) or not…

We consider a game with two piles, in which two players take turn to add $a$ or $b$ chips ($a$, $b$ are not necessarily positive) randomly and independently to their respective piles. The player who collects $n$ chips first wins the game.…

Consider a P\'olya urn where a drawn ball of colour $i$ is replaced together with a fixed number $m_i$ of balls of the same colour. We give a simple proof that if, for example, there are two colours and the urn starts with more balls of…

We study a game on a graph $G$ played by $r$ {\it revolutionaries} and $s$ {\it spies}. Initially, revolutionaries and then spies occupy vertices. In each subsequent round, each revolutionary may move to a neighboring vertex or not move,…

We put forward a proof of Solomon's rule, in terms of matrices, for multiplication in the descent algebra of the symmetric group. Our proof exploits the graphs that we can obtain from all the subsets of the set of transpositions,…

A game in which one player makes unitary transformations of a simple system, and another seeks to confound the resulting state by a randomly chosen action is analyzed carefully. It is shown that the second player can reduce any system to a…

We present a short proof of MacMahon's classic result that the number of permutations with $k$ inversions equals the number whose major index (sum of positions at which descents occur) is $k$

When specialized to the context of permutations, Schmerl and Trotter's Theorem states that every simple permutation which is not a parallel alternation contains a simple permutation with one fewer entry. We give an elementary proof of this…

The starting point of this work is an equality between two quantities $A$ and $B$ found in the literature, which involve the {\em doubling-modulo-an-odd-integer} map, i.e., $x\in {\mathbb N} \mapsto 2x \bmod{(2n+1)}$ for some positive…